Play dead, Ubu . . .good dog

I've been a pet owner on an almost continual basis since 1976, when my parents got me my first dog. He was a mixed breed with a lot of terrier in his makeup, and it showed in his face and ears. We had him around for a long time, passing away a few minutes before midnight, New Years Eve 1991--just a few months shy of turning sixteen years old. My second dog, who is in foster care with my mother because my wife had seven cats when we moved in together, will turn fifteen this year and doesn't show many signs of slowing down. Currently my wife and I have one dog and one cat, who get along pretty well for being such complete opposites in species. But there are times when it's obvious that the theory that pets can help lower your blood pressure has been completely thrown out the window by those two.

Naturally I've been keeping a close eye on the recent, massive recalls of pet foods. With regularity I've been keeping up with what foods are added to the list each day, looking to see if the food we feed our critters has made an appearance on the list. Fortunately we've dodged the bullets thus far, but I'm still worried that that may change at any time, especially since gluten meal is a component in both our dog and cat's food.

It appears that the culprit is a chemical called melamine, which causes kidney damage, but seemingly is affecting more cats than dogs right now. Melamine can also give the appearance of a higher protein quality to the gluten, which would make it more expensive. The FDA doesn't know how the chemical got into the affected wheat gluten, which raises two questions for me.

One, what the hell has the FDA been doing lately? Where the hell is the USDA? How could a chemically tainted shipment of wheat gluten even make it into the food chain of our pets? Could this happen to the human food supply? So far the FDA is only acknowledging that sixteen animals have died as a result of eating the tainted food, which indicates to me that either: 1. They're early in their investigation, or 2. acknowledging a higher number of pet deaths would reveal that the FDA has been sitting on its bureaucratic fat ass, doing an half-assed job of protecting the food supply. Second, what in the hell are we doing importing wheat gluten from China? The last I checked, America's heartland was capable of producing enough wheat to feed the U.S. population with plenty left over to send overseas to populations that need the food.

It's a scary thought that we're importing wheat products from overseas, something that this incident has shown could be exploited by terrorists quite easily. Thank Jeebus that the "gubmint" is on the job and effectively protecting us.